Yesterday, I was discussing the status of railways in India and other countries with my friends. Apparently, European countries are way ahead in the cleanliness and beauty of railways. India is also chugging along and making some interesting changes in its railways. Here are some of the interesting things worth noting.
Shatabdi Trains
Shatabdi trains have much nicer looking coaches. They also have television sets in each coach(two of them for people sitting in opposite directions). Newspaper, dinner, breakfast and snacks are provided in the train, making it feel more like an airplane. These trains also run between metros (mostly just two stations) only, so people can't get inside the coaches anywhere. E.g., a Shatabdi starting from Bangalore stops directly in Chennai and nowhere else in between.
Double Decker
The thought of trains between Bangalore and Chennai reminded me of double-decker trains. It is a new experiment done to carry more passengers in the same number of coaches. I think a coach contained more than 120 passengers in a nice comfortable sitting position. Here is how they look from outside and inside.
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Bio-Toilets
The ugliest thing about the Indian railways is the filth on the tracks that gets deposited through old age Hooper style toilets. This aspect of cleanliness is being addressed using bio-toilets. Bio-toilets emit only water on the tracks thus keeping the stations and railway lines clean. As of now, only 1400 coaches have been fitted with Bio-toilets, which would represent almost 1% of all the running coaches, but it is a step in the right direction and may enhance cleanliness substantially going forward if implemented in all the coaches. Here is one economic times article describing their current status.
Railways adds more bio-toilets
Freight corridors
In one of the letters to his shareholders, Warren Buffet talked about his huge investment in BNSF(Burlington Northern Santa Fe), one of the largest rail networks in the USA, and said that Rail transport is at least five times more fuel efficient than road transport. On top of that, rail freight can be carried on electricity, which is not possible with Road Transport. As electricity can be produced using different types of raw materials (Coal, Hydro, Wind, Solar, Nuclear etc.), one need not use Diesel or its derivative. Thus more usage of Rail Freight can save a lot of foreign exchange for a country like India, which has to import most of its petroleum requirements. Also, rail transport carried on electricity is much more environmentally friendly compared to the freight carried on the roads. Sadly, for last many years, India moved in the wrong direction. The percentage of freight carried by Road has gone up from 35% to 65% in last 30-35 years, while the freight carried by Rail has gone down from 65% to 30%. Slow movement of freight on rail tracks and pilferage of the transported goods is the main reasons behind this decline. As India needs to carry more and more passengers on its existing rail network, the time available for freight movement is going down substantially, thus causing delays in Rail freight movement, and making it commercially unviable for businesses. To solve this problem, Indian Railways have started implementing dedicated freight corridors for freight movement. The corridors are built roughly on the lines of Golden Quadrilateral and North-East South-West corridor put together. Essentially, there will be 6 corridors running like the following.
a. Mumbai (JNPT)- Delhi (Khurja,Dadri)
b. Ludhiana (Passing via Delhi/Khurja/Dadri)-Dankuni (Near Kolkata)
c. Kolkata- Chennai
d. Chennai-Mumbai
e. Kolkata-Mumbai
f. Delhi-Chennai
First four corridors represent the sides of the quadrilateral, while the last two are diagonals. Out of these six, first two are in some stages of implementation, while last 4 are still on paper and studies are being conducted on them. For the first two, a two-line specially dedicated freight corridor will be created in roughly 3300 km long route. Financing for both these have been secured(Japan as well as the World Bank), Land acquisition has been done for quite a large section and contracts have been awarded to players to build these. Good part is that the players who have got these awards are not Ambani types and may finish the project on time. Roughly one third of contract work has already been awarded for around 1000 Kms. Here is the link to the announcement.
Contract awarded for Freight Corridor
Jammu Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Railway Link
Even though we keep talking about Kashmir to Kanyakumari and has even a hit song by that name, the Indian Railways do not connect Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The trains from the rest of the India could only go up to Jammu Tavi. A large project to connect Jammu Tavi to Srinagar and extending that link to Baramulla has been taken up. This involves various technical challenges like building World's highest railway structure (higher than the tip of the Eiffel tower) and making third largest tunnel in the Asia and so on. The work on this stretch is in Progress. Whenever it gets completed, it will be a marvel worth seeing. It also has high strategic importance as it will allow us to later connect Kargil/ Leh/ Laddakh with the railway line, thus providing us some equality with China, which has a railway link very close to the border. Please read more about this line at the following Wikipedia link.
Kashmir Railway
Railway lines of Strategic importance
Recently India announced a very ambitious plan to connect both Leh/Laddakh as well as the Arunachal / Tawang side of the Indian border with Railway line. Once completed, these will be both a strategic asset as well as tourist destinations of the country. But given the delays that we see in such initiatives, this may take quite some time. Read more about these in this article.
Indian Railway along the borders
Edit : 24th Jan 2014
While I was writing on the progresses made by Indian Railways, a new move was made by Railway ministry. They have constituted a new body to study and implement bullet trains across India. As this is currently at pre-feasibility study stage, there is not much talk about it, but it looks like Mumbai-Ahmadabad, Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi- Jaipur and Chennai-Bangalore routes are under consideration. The biggest problem will be financial viability as travelling by the train may cost more than airplane. Following are the two links about this project, with second one having more details.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/plans-to-run-bullet-trains--re-activated/article1-1140942.aspx
http://onrails.in/content/proposed-bullet-trainhigh-speed-rail-network-india.html
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